Tag: Learnings

20 Years On: Reflections From the Frontier of Philanthropy

Note: the post below was written by Helen Turvey, Karien Bezuidenhout and Chris McGivern when we ran the Shuttleworth Foundation.  Whilst some of the specifics pertaining to the organisation are no longer relevant, the ideas, theories and insights still hold true.

Last year, The Shuttleworth Foundation turned twenty!

Our experiment to re-imagine philanthropy has made the Foundation a very different organisation from the one it resembled in 2001. It’s been a long, sometimes bumpy, but mostly positive journey into maturity. As individuals, we have – hopefully – gained a little wisdom to accompany our wrinkles and wanted to collect our thoughts to pause and reflect on our story so far. We hope you will find something useful in Field Notes From the Frontier of Philanthropy and find it thought-provoking, helpful or adaptable in some way.

But mostly, we hope it inspires you to think differently and, maybe, take action. The world must change substantially and urgently. Even without the unknown, long-tail impacts of the pandemic, we live in an era of damaging social unrest, rising levels of inequality and rampant environmental destruction. It is a far cry from what technology promised in 2001.

We share a birth year with the launch of the iPod, iTunes, Wikipedia and the world’s first 3G network. Computerphobia of the ’80s and ’90s was peaking with the dot-com bust and the Y2K Bug, and entering remission as Web 2.0 emerged. Broadband was beginning to replace dial-up. A revolution was happening in our pockets as mobile phones became smaller, then smarter, changing the way we organise our lives and interact with each other in almost every conceivable way. Looking back, they were heady days. Technology was going to be the saviour.

But the opposite has proven true. In the post-9/11 world, our physical movements are tracked aggressively, more than at any other time in history. Surveillance capitalism is dining out at The Savoy on our private thoughts and personal data. A mix of extraction, exploitation and artificial scarcity remains the business model of our times. We bought smartphones in abundance, then just threw them away for the next upgrade, creating mountains of electronic waste, leaking batteries, and never-to-be-recovered precious metals in the process. And it’s not even fun anymore: social media was meant to engage us and bring us all together, not enrage us and rip us apart.

There is hope, however. New political, social and economic models are emerging during this period of global and technological disruption. Some are beginning to gain traction. People are turning their backs on the status quo as they realise its systems and power structures – designed and optimised for yesterday’s industries – do not and will not work in today’s context. Philanthropy must do the same if globalisation’s discontents are not to become its malcontents.

There couldn’t be a better time to start forging real change, despite the chaos and fear and trepidation about the future. That is why we will continue to fund individuals brave enough to introduce new ideas and innovations and build new systems for a more open and equitable world. Of course, we can’t guarantee a better future in the next twenty years, but we will spare no effort to get there. And we hope you will come along for the ride.

https://readme.shuttleworthfoundation.org/

Thou​ ​Shalt​ ​Scale​ ​Sustainably

Note: the post below was written by Helen Turvey, Karien Bezuidenhout and Chris McGivern when we ran the Shuttleworth Foundation.  Whilst some of the specifics pertaining to the organisation are no longer relevant, the ideas, theories and insights still hold true.

The​ ​Ten​ ​Commandments​ ​of​ ​Scaling

Crowdsourced in Vancouver, Canada, from the assembled Shuttleworth Fellows, alumni and staff of 2017, and transcribed (with bad jokes) by Gavin Weale.

In the world of social innovation and making change, we are continually barraged by the imperative to scale. In every funding bid, in every set of objectives, it is an impossible dynamic to escape if you are trying to seek support. But what does scale even mean? And why do you even want to scale? More importantly, if you do end up going 100X, will you know how to handle it without turning into a hot mess of anxiety and remorse?

Following a Come-to-Jesus confessional about my scaling pains with Livity Africa, in which I described an attempt to scale in 2016 that ended in tears, heartbreak and debt, we discussed and shortlisted the top ten lessons I and others should draw from the combined hivemind-megabrain of the Shuttleworth Foundation macro-institutional memory.

That is to say: here is the shit you might benefit from knowing, in ten Biblical directives. In short: you can believe in God, but do remember to tie up your camels.

1)​ ​Cash​ ​Flow​ ​is​ ​king

Whatever your P&L or balance sheet says, if you see minus signs in your cashflow then you have to take action, and quickly. This may mean painful decisions like reducing headcount. You need to grasp those nettles as early as you can to avoid greater pain down the road when you can’t afford to pay people’s salaries. Which, for those who have never experienced it, creates a sensation something akin to what I imagine having a fork inserted into one of your eyeballs would feel like.

2)​ ​Thou​ ​shalt​ ​be​ ​true​ ​to​ ​thine​ ​mission

Success can breed success, and, especially in the funding world, zeitgeists come and go. You may be the cock of the walk today, but if the whims of funders change, you could be tomorrow’s Kentucky Fried Leftovers. When scaling fast, you can protect yourself by defining and adhering to your mission with almost laser precision. If you and your team are clear on the value you want to create, you are less likely to sleepwalk into bad funding relationships.

3)​ ​Blessed​ ​be​ ​the​ ​incrementalist

There are hares. There are tortoises. And there are lemmings waiting to throw themselves off of the Cliff of Scale through sheer stupidity. If I could talk with my younger self, the one with a full head of hair and a six-pack, I would tell him to approach big opportunities with an attitude of incrementalism, both in terms of the targets he takes on, and the team he builds. And I would tell him to stop being such a dick.

4)​ ​Thou​ ​shalt​ ​not​ ​covet​ ​thy​ ​neighbours​ ​scale

Your growth and your scale is your own business. While it may be tempting to think that the Silicon Valley model of scale is the only true benchmark, in the context of a social enterprise, the scale is relative to your impact. If you train a million people, is that truly “scale” if the training is not impactful? What even is scale? Why is it important to you? How do you define it? What’s the meaning of life? Who am I? What year is it? Who’s the President? (Actually, on second thoughts don’t answer that last one…)

5)​ ​Thou​ ​shalt​ ​not​ ​take​ ​whopper-bucks

Who is going to say no to being offered a squillion dollars by a funder? But if you do… What happens when that contract ends? Large funding wins should be greeted with celebratory fizzy drinks or other non-alcoholic victuals, and then treated with extreme caution and scepticism. Your approach to scaling up will be key here. How will you crew up and then potentially crew down if the contract is relatively short? Whopper money with a whopper target tastes better on the way down when the funds hit your account, but not so good when you are vomiting blood with anxiety trying to hit an astronomical delivery target. Make sure your funder target is achievable and delivers scale of impact too.

6)​ ​Thou​ ​shalt​ ​be​ ​modular

If you are to stray from your mission in the interests of, say, generating a ton of cash from a commercial opportunity, then you should try and think modular. That could mean sectioning off products or revenue streams to be delivered in a way that they can be grown / spun-off, or killed and forgotten without spilling too much blood. Never look a gift-horse in the mouth. Just make sure you can humanely shoot it in the paddock if it leads you in the wrong direction.

7)​ ​Thou​ ​shalt​ ​document

Sustainable growth will only happen through continuous learning. Documenting mistakes and learnings, as well as recording values, mission and strategic / operational principles, is best captured along the way – although some of the most critical learnings will inevitably be internalised by the sheer agony they cause you. In a way, defining your scale in terms of your business model could be treated as a product or experiment of its own.

8)​ ​Thou​ ​shalt​ ​have​ ​stretchy-pants

Cashflow will fluctuate, especially if your model is heavily funder-based. How are you going to keep your voluminous under-trousers stretchy enough to take up the slack when your coffers grow, but not fall to your ankles when your pockets are empty, leaving you dangerously exposed? It is worth having scenarios in mind for both worst and best-case scenarios, and considering how your operations and team would cope with either. This will force you to think about the best way to scale up or down in an agile way. An outsourced / freelancer model may help.

9)​ ​Thou​ ​shalt​ ​put​ ​time​ ​and​ ​effort​ ​into​ ​your​ ​financial​ ​forecasting

If you do not understand your numbers you will die. Make sure you know, or pay for someone who knows how to help you know. Reading a cashflow forecast and profit and loss sheet is a basic human need for a social entrepreneur. Cigarette-packet budgets and thumbsuck forecasts will get you through a couple of years of helter-skelter growth, but if you want to really ride the Big Wheel, you better invest in the time or cost of a bad-ass beancounter. And if that is not a clusterfuck of metaphors in one sentence, I don’t know what is.

10)​ ​Thou​ ​shalt​ ​define​ ​the​ ​value​ ​you​ ​want​ ​to​ ​create​ ​in​ ​the​ ​world

I will say it again: scaling numbers does not equal scaling impact. The value you want to create in the world is up to you to define, based on your ambition and the things you think are important in your theory of change. If you know you are creating true value and changing things, it should be fairly clear to you, and you perhaps should not even worry about scale if you haven’t got that bit clear. If you have, then go forth: you are ready to make like a lizard and get scale.

With thanks to all Shuttleworth Fellows who took part in this Gathering session in 2017:

Peter Bloom, Sean Bonner, Tiffiniy Cheng, Peter Cunliffe-Jones, Alasdair Davies, Isha Datar, Kathi Fletcher, Adam Hyde, Seamus Kraft, Tarek Loubani, Aaron Makaruk, Peter Murray-Rust, Luka Mustafa, Mad Price-Ball, Anasuya Sengupta, Astra Taylor, Ugo Vallauri, Jesse Von Doom, Gavin Weale, and Johnny West.

IP Is Killing People, Your Government Can Stop It

Note: the post below was written by Helen Turvey, Karien Bezuidenhout and Chris McGivern when we ran the Shuttleworth Foundation.  Whilst some of the specifics pertaining to the organisation are no longer relevant, the ideas, theories and insights still hold true.

“These extraordinary times and circumstances call for extraordinary measures. The US supports the waiver of IP protections on COVID-19 vaccines to help end the pandemic… ”

– US Trade Representative Katherine Tai

Joe Biden’s decision to support India and South Africa’s patent waiver proposal is a monumental moment in more ways than one. These are extraordinary times and this is an extraordinary message from a nation that built its constitution, economy and way of life around property rights.

We welcome the announcement, albeit with cautious optimism. US support only opens the door for talks at the WTO, not immediate action. It could take the best part of a year or longer before we see vaccines produced openly where needed and can deliver more shots in arms. And it might not happen at all. The pharma industry and its supporters will be voracious in their arguments. They already have significant backing, and deep-rooted motivations to keep the status quo intact.

Shuttleworth Fellow Achal Prabhala has worked tirelessly on access to medicine issues across two decades. His fellowship work demonstrates how Western-designed global intellectual property rules harm millions of lives in the Global South and describes the way corporations exploit overly-broad patent laws to re-patent drugs and preserve their monopolies. He is one of a small band of global researchers, activists and scientists who have been instrumental in building the wave of public pressure that influenced Biden’s decision.

It is critical that we do not allow that momentum to dip. Achal’s work reveals the truth behind the purposefully-complex IP landscape and allows us to deconstruct the pharma industry’s arguments. It’s time to make the case for open vaccines and access to medicine, and not only for the duration of the pandemic.

Public money, private profits

Taxpayers have already paid for the vaccines, twice. Public money funded the research and our governments guaranteed payment in advance for production of every vial. The companies have already been compensated. No ifs, no buts: the vaccines belong to the people. They are a public good, and should be open and accessible to all of us.

If companies have been paid, why is there a need for IP? The pharma industry claims it is an accelerator of vaccine innovation. But as more people die and threats of mutation increase, patent protections and knowledge restrictions look increasingly like tools of industrial-strength self-interest. The patents-first, people-second approach has proved both absurd and disastrous.

Government obligations

Governments are meant to keep their citizens safe. The best pathway to safety during a pandemic is to end it quickly by ensuring global vaccination. The quickest way to treat everyone is to share knowledge and enable tech transfer.

This waiver should have happened – in full – right at the very beginning. But world leaders are heavily influenced by the pharmaceutical industry’s loud and influential proponents and have been slow to connect the dots. Their widespread, narrow-minded belief in an inequitable patent system has curtailed the global response with a horrific cost to human life.

IP is the problem, not the solution

Which is more important: saving lives, or maintaining a proprietary knowledge system designed, optimised and protected by the pharma industry, behind closed doors at the WTO and in the lobbies of governments? Pharma is worried the waiver will destroy the current IP system and limit financial rewards from cutting-edge drug developers.

Frankly, that’s the point. IP and its monopoly-based model is the problem, not the solution. It creates barriers by concentrating production in a few areas and restricting it elsewhere. The system is fundamentally broken. The EU’s Ursula von der Leyen states that waiving intellectual property patents will “not bring a single dose of vaccine in the short- and medium-term”. She is right, but 18 months into a pandemic we are already in the long-term. If IP had been waived at the beginning, where would we be now? We must grasp the opportunity offered by this waiver to make the case for faster, better, more open and equitable approaches to solving global health challenges.

Working for shared interests

Without a healthy society, economies suffer, education systems suffer and populations suffer. Now is the time to look holistically at how economies are organised and plan them around equity, justice and fair rewards instead of around the interests of Big Pharma.

The pharma industry has been incredibly successful in lobbying governments around IP matters, and is a model for the creative industries’ adoption of a copyright-first approach. Upsettingly – and unsurprisingly – movie studios, music bigwigs and publishing giants are already expressing concerns about the TRIPS waiver. Their intervention – effectively: ‘we support defeating the virus unless it harms our margins’ – is both grim in sentiment and utterly tone deaf to the needs and demands of the moment.

The market is not the answer

The market cannot solve global health issues of this scale. Healthcare capitalism is failing the world now, has failed the world before, and will fail it again in the future. We need different thinking around intellectual property for medicine, diagnostics and infrastructure. Access to research and lifesaving drugs must be at the heart of any future plans.

If the market cannot or will not deliver lifesaving medicines, we need to embrace alternative approaches. Public money has always played an important role, and state-supported innovation is something to celebrate. Let’s recalibrate the message around public spending as an investment rather than a cost. And let’s be better at philanthropy. Fund research and commit to publishing it openly. And if you say you are open, mean it.

Closed Gates, Opened Gates

Bill Gates stepped back from his suggestion that intellectual property underpins innovation and does not present a barrier to equitable vaccine access. It’s quite a U-turn. He has a religious zeal for proprietary solutions and an IP system that made him unimaginably wealthy. And when Oxford University researchers wanted to make their vaccine formula open and more widely available for further study, Gates talked them out of it.

So while we applaud this decision, it’s important to remain critical. It only applies temporarily, and his perverse unwillingness to consider alternative ways of managing IP has a long and damaging history. He has a highly persuasive voice in the corridors of power, and has undoubtedly influenced the months-long delay in support for the waiver proposal. Hundreds of thousands have died in the meantime.

Shades of imperialism

Gates’s initial response to the waiver proposal also exposes another troubling issue. Vaccine research is published by the West and vetted by the West, for vaccines licensed by Western corporations to be manufactured for the West at great profit. While wealthy countries sat on vaccine stockpiles, developing nations went without. There is also a belief that countries with fewer resources are incapable of making treatments safely, despite the fact India is already at the centre of global vaccine manufacturing.

Another prevalent attitude is that knowledge exchange with countries like China, Cuba and Russia – who have all developed vaccines – is a national security issue rather than a solution to the pandemic. Surely it’s time to shake off the superiority complex, end the imperialistic prejudice, and give credit where it’s due. If solving global challenges involves working openly with the West’s traditional ‘enemies’, so be it.

This is just the beginning

Patents are only a part of the story. Although the US supports the temporary lifting of IP protections for coronavirus vaccines, it is less enthusiastic about sharing knowhow and tech transfer. Pressure is needed to ensure the world gets what it needs. Enabling the capacity to deliver vaccines everywhere is challenging but potentially achievable within months.

Once this pandemic ends we cannot return to the norm. Monopoly-based IP models that create artificial scarcity are not the answer, even when judged on their own terms. If patents are an incentive to innovation and medicinal progress, why is most of the world still excluded from access to treatments for diabetes, cystic fibrosis, or cancer?

We can do better. Let’s use this opportunity to reimagine global intellectual property rules and build a better, more open future that puts people over patents and profits.

The Shuttleworth Foundation: An Open Book

Note: the post below was written by Helen Turvey, Karien Bezuidenhout and Chris McGivern when we ran the Shuttleworth Foundation.  Whilst some of the specifics pertaining to the organisation are no longer relevant, the ideas, theories and insights still hold true.

As a small organisation operating at a fraction of the budget enjoyed by many other funders, we must continuously and closely scrutinise our work. Our philosophy remains the same, but new fellows, ideas and experiences contribute to our knowledge pool and influence where we go next – and how. We adapt our methods accordingly, weaving in best practices and weeding out roadblocks to our fellows’ mission progress. Just as our views on systemic shifts are centred in a conviction for evolution, not revolution, we believe positive, lasting organisational change is best achieved gradually and incrementally.

However, it is also vital to take stock of long-term progress. In 2018, we took a deep dive into the previous decade of our fellowship model, revisiting highs – and lows – and speaking to fellows about their experiences. We intended to uncover wrong turns and to explore areas where we could improve. There was plenty to chew on but, overall, we were pleasantly surprised: discussions with our growing community of past and present fellows revealed our alternative model of philanthropy holds up well.

We started this experimental model in 2007 with the belief that philanthropy could be better. Our idea was to instil openness, collaboration and community into our approach. We wanted to replace the hierarchical structures typically seen in traditional funding with a focus on co-ownership, agency and empowerment. There have been some tweaks around the edges since but, today, we believe those fundamental elements continue to offer our fellows greater agency to make progress and unlock more benefit for society.

Which brings us to our book. In one part, it tells our story as a community and offers hat tips to those who have contributed along the way. We don’t like to talk about success or failure and prefer to focus our thoughts on progress and learning. But on reflection, it is striking how much our fellows move their fields forward.

Consider our funding efforts in telecommunications, where we see a trend towards bottom-up connectivity and community-owned networks. Our fellows have played a significant role in this blossoming movement. Individual projects by Steve Song, Paul Gardner-Stephen, Peter Bloom and Luka Mustafa have built on each other to great effect to democratise access and empower communities, reduce costs, and shift thinking at policy level. Elsewhere, in a world dominated by global finance, Astra Taylor’s work with The Debt Collective community poses important questions about money and debt: her efforts so far helped eliminate over a billion dollars of student debt owed to predatory lenders.

These impressive examples of fellowship projects impact millions of people – even more extraordinary when you consider they were achieved on a relatively meagre budget of around a million dollars per fellow, over a three-year fellowship. In our view, it is clear this demonstrates that size of grant – often the central component of the funder-fundee relationship – is not a lone indicator of success. There is far more to consider, which is the second source of inspiration for our book.

We seek system change in our domain just as our fellows seek change in theirs. Several major funders have borrowed from our ideas, as we have borrowed from others – just as it should be. Yet our community’s frustrations with the traditional philanthropic world remain. Changemakers with vast potential are still overwhelmingly restricted by top-down approaches to funding, arbitrary metrics, short-termism, and more. If we want to live in a better, more equitable world, this must be addressed.

We aim to do this in our book and add some practical flesh to the philosophical bones of Open philanthropy to better explain the hows and whys of our working methods. It is not a how-to guide or instruction manual – our processes fit our intent and purpose, and we know they may not work for others. Instead, we hope it provides inspiration and shows the strength of openness as a foundation from which to build viable alternatives to unhelpful funding practices. We hope it makes you think. But mostly, that you enjoy it…

https://shuttleworthfoundation.org/book/

Fellowship forward

Note: the post below was written by Helen Turvey, Karien Bezuidenhout and Chris McGivern when we ran the Shuttleworth Foundation.  Whilst some of the specifics pertaining to the organisation are no longer relevant, the ideas, theories and insights still hold true.

Over the past 6 months we have dissected every aspect of this model, from recruitment to alumni, from Fellowship highs to Fellowship lows, to really understand the value and effect of every component. We have examined the arc of the programme over the past 10 years, Fellow by Fellow as well as cumulatively. What we learned has helped us determine how we might continue our Open Philanthropy experiment.

What have we learned?

The fellowship programme we have today will be almost unrecognisable in its implementation to the first Fellows of 2007. What they will recognise is the essence of what we set out to do, the values that underpin that and the central role Fellows play.

We went back to basics, to the Letter of Wishes we wrote when we started this programme. The ethos described centred around fellowship “because we believe that people, rather than projects, are the true change agents.” Our Fellowship is supported by funding, openness, innovation and governance. We wanted to examine the outcomes of our programme against what we set out to do, and this provided the perfect compass.

Throughout the evolution of the model these have held up, and we believe they still do as we move forward.

1.) Individuals

The long term impact of the Foundation lies in the people at the heart of it. The Fellow (and the teams they assemble during their fellowship) take full ownership of an idea, they have the direct experience of implementing it, and they internalise the learning to take into the next phase, regardless of whether the idea proved viable.

Projects and organisations come and go. Many ideas do not result in successful outcomes upon the first try. These individuals are willing to take that risk for the greater good and if we can bet on the right people, they will succeed in bringing about positive change, over time, by building on their fellowship experience. As long as we believe in them and the change they want to make, they have the strength to get up and try again, each time adding to their knowledge, turning that belief into reality.

2.) Alone together

Each individual Fellow has a part to play in their field, and on the fellowship. While they have the freedom and agency to act independently, the relationships and interactions between Fellows provide a valuable sounding board and fertile environment for new ideas to be tested and blockages to be removed.

This is as true for Alumni as for current Fellows. Individually they are pushing the boundaries of conventional wisdom and the status quo. There is no-one who has the exact knowledge or experience they need. Bringing them together creates a space in which ideas can be tested and dissected, alongside trusted and respected peers, who share a common hope for the future but come with very different perspectives.

Diversity of thinking and experience is essential. It is not by interacting with those that have a similar set of skills and frame of reference that truly revolutionary ideas grow. It is by being challenged and inspired by others who are trusted and respected because of, not despite, their differences. Sharing their wisdom and combining expertise within the group is what enables them to take their mastery to the next level.

3.) Over time

During or directly after an intervention you can at best assess the implementation of an idea. To recognise impact, you need distance and time for the knowledge to be shared and changes in behaviour to occur.

We review the impact of each fellowship 5 years after the Fellow has exited the programme. Time allows the Alumni to settle into the next phase, for others to test and build upon the outputs, and for the true influence of the Fellow and their idea to become clear. It is actually only now, after 10 years, that we can see the broader contribution the collective Fellows have made in the world.

Each individual investment should be selected thoughtfully to make a contribution to our own thinking in a field, and then given enough time to mature in the world. Patience is key.

4.) With room to fail and learn

Whilst there are some social challenges with known solutions – vaccines for example – this is not the space we are in. We specifically look for individuals with fresh perspectives, with ideas that are not yet staple dinner party conversation, who want to tackle problems with as yet unproven solutions, and who challenge conventional wisdom.

When you know something is broken, it is easy to throw a spanner in the works of the establishment, to disrupt what exists. What is much harder is building something new. This comes with the risk of failure. To create the best environment for these ideas to be tested and honest learning to emerge, we have to accept the risk involved in trying to build something new and make sure that our behaviour within the group reflects that.

Even failing at solving a problem offers a valuable opportunity to learn more about both the problem and potential solutions. If it happens in an environment that is supportive, recognises the value of failure and captures those learnings, no investment is wasted. The outcomes will influence both theorists and practitioners in the field. The real failure would be not being deliberate about the experiments we do in the world and not paying careful attention to how it plays out, during and post fellowship.

5.) Openly

Actively capturing the outputs of each fellowship and sharing those openly, enables others to engage with the idea, learn from the implementation, build upon the progress made and expand the impact of our efforts and investments well beyond our own reach. Openness is what ensures that every attempt, whether it succeeds or fails, creates foundational assets and becomes a positive contribution to change in the world. We started by looking for openly licensed products at the heart of every fellowship. Open source was key to unlocking economic potential and self-reliance.

The next frontier for openness lies well beyond intellectual property. Individuals now produce and share more data, information and resulting knowledge than ever before, yet the centres of economic control have not shifted substantially. Privacy and security has come to dominate this conversation. We still need to find the appropriate equilibrium that balances the greater good and individual rights.

6.) Engaging with technology

10 years ago we were asking how can technology be used for good, especially if access was democratised. There was a sense of promise and opportunity associated with getting technology into the hands of everyone. Today the use of information and communication technology has become near ubiquitous, yet depth of contribution and equity in participation in the knowledge economy has not.

While pockets of constructive engagement exist, increased access has served to further divide, not create a shared sense of community, ownership or purpose. The commons is being eroded and the meanings of democracy, freedom, economic justice and human rights are being fundamentally challenged. The struggle around access to data and the resulting knowledge has been turned on its head with individuals generating more and more data while struggling to retain access to it themselves.

The mere inclusion of a technological component in an idea is no longer of interest to us. Questions on freedom, control and self-determination around how technologies and their byproducts interact are now far more important.

What questions are we asking now?

Progress means new questions and challenges.

1.) Society (Public goods)

In numbers, there has been no better time in history to be alive. At the same time, there has been no time in history for us to be so starkly aware of what we lack. At every level – individual to national, regional to global, even interplanetary – it is possible to know and try to understand the impact of each of our actions on those around us, near and far. Democracy, capitalism and the implied social contracts of the 20th century are no longer sufficient to effectively support the complex and connected societies needed to steward public goods for public good.

There is no more room for a zero sum game. Disruption is already happening. Now is the time to rebuild.

2.) Systems (Money flow)

The systems enabling the flow of money are becoming increasingly complex, and increasingly obfuscated. Controlling and tracking gives as much power and authority, if not more than, owning the money in the first place. While it has become easier to be a global citizen, moving money through the global banking system has become much harder for anyone other than standard corporations. Before we could just do a bank transfer in x currency to y’s bank account. In some instances that has now become impossible, in others innovations have emerged.

How should/could/does money move and reach those most able to put it to constructive use? What organisational structures and data measures do we need to provide adequate protection while not stifling innovation? This is a system that needs unblocking.

Similar questions apply to how we create and exchange value at every level of society, how we govern, share ownership and give agency. What new social, political or economic systems might offer a more relevant alternative? How might we test these theories as close to reality as possibly, while tracking and containing unintended consequences?

We would like to experiment with new approaches, starting small, and passing our experience on to others who have the potential to collaborate and influence across borders as we know them today.

3.) Substance (Themes)

Access to telecommunications technology has come, and will keep coming, at a monumental rate. It is a challenge which has been taken up widely, with social, public, commercial and philanthropic interventions on offer. The quality and quantity of initiatives, both top down and bottom up, and the high level of innovation, is encouraging.

Technology is also one of the spokes in the wheel of the future of education. There is general agreement on the importance of universal, quality education, especially around Maths and Science. While there is no single solution for achieving that, there are many inspiring models being explored all over the world. Uniform delivery at scale is no longer the ideal. The most appropriate, contextualised approaches will thrive.

Neither of these areas specifically need our attention any longer.

We have been experimenting on the periphery of these themes for a while. On the one hand we’ve expanded our focus on technology from telecommunications to medical devices, environmental monitoring, bio-printing, cellular agriculture, small scale manufacturing and scientific research. On the other, our Fellows’s focus started with formal education and evolved to access to knowledge and self-directed learning. Their work now includes access to the resources and enabling environments you need for self-actualisation, including open government, internet freedom, digital human rights, data driven decision-making, access to medicines, fact checking and food security.

Over the next year we would like to go even further, asking what challenges the new normal has created, and which old ones needs a fresh perspective to shift thinking.

The next round of applications opens on 1 February 2019.

How we measure success

Note: the post below was written by Helen Turvey and Karien Bezuidenhout when we ran the Shuttleworth Foundation.  Whilst some of the specifics pertaining to the organisation are no longer relevant, the ideas, theories and insights still hold true.

Applicants, and sometimes even Fellows, find it difficult to compute the broad question “what do YOU want to do?”. They keep looking for guidance to narrow down the scope of possibility and fit within prescribed parameters. Yes, we want open and innovative, we like technology and we get excited about access. Other than that, and even beyond that, we want applicants to tell us what they want to do, not the other way round.

In order to decide what it is you want to do, you need to know what you want to achieve and in order to know if you are on the right path, you need to know how you will measure success. We believe this is different in each and every case. When dealing with social change, shifting the way people perceive and engage with the world around them, the most each of us can hope to do is to make a contribution to that change. Almost never does measuring this contribution conform to the simplistic single cause and effect paradigm.

Measuring your contribution to change – your impact – is hard. It is complicated, complex, does not adhere to your implementation timelines and often extends way beyond your control. While many models for measuring impact exist, in truth most of them only evaluate implementation. On top of that they are tailored to specific types of projects. We support a wide range of for-profit and not-for-profit implementation and experimentation models. No single success matrix can be applied across the board.

Over time we have also learnt:

Numbers show how many, not how much. There is a tendency to gravitate towards quantifiable metrics, the things that are easy to measure rather than those that are truer. How many users? How many beneficiaries? How much investment? These may be useful measures of interest, but they do not give you much information on the depth and sustained impact you are having on your intended market. ‘How many’ helps quantify potential for success, it is not success in itself.

Price does not mean value. A large cash injection by an investor means someone is making a bet on the possibility of making money from your company in future. It is no guarantee of future income or sustainability. Nor is it a measure of any value you are adding (or offering) to your industry or your clients. There may be potential in your idea, either as a going-concern or a competitive threat, but this form of validation is much more of an indication of the expectations of others than a measure of your progress towards your intended goal.

Journalists are not your target beneficiaries. News coverage, public accolades and social enterprise awards are all great ways of getting your message out, but to what end? The risk here is that you spend all of your time meeting the criteria of selection committees and award judges, but miss the connection to your target audience completely.

What does that mean for how we, and our Fellows, measure success now and impact in the future? At the highest level, success, for us, in the context of our fellowship programme, is:

  • We know more at the end of a fellowship than we did in the beginning, through experimentation and iteration.
  • That knowledge is available to others to learn from and build upon.
  • The individual Fellow goes on to influence positive social change in their field way beyond the duration of the fellowship.

Within this context, we work with Fellows to define their own success, for the fellowship year and for their big picture change in the world. If some of the ideas we explore together result in a new norm, that would be the cherry on top.

From Traditional Funder to Today

Note: the post below was written by Helen Turvey and Karien Bezuidenhout when we ran the Shuttleworth Foundation.  Whilst some of the specifics pertaining to the organisation are no longer relevant, the ideas, theories and insights still hold true.

Our main goal was to improve the quality of education in South Africa. We invested in projects that offered unique and innovative solutions to educational challenges in a developing society, focused on the areas of science, technology, entrepreneurship and maths in education, as well as propagating the use of open source software. The Foundation operated as a traditional funding agency – we accepted proposals and funded them. Grantees implemented their projects and came back with reports.

By the time we’d seen the third proposal suggesting the same intervention, we realised that we were not learning, building institutional knowledge or having sufficient impact in the world as a result of our investments. The ideas were all valuable in the world, but we had the potential to be more challenging and to make a contribution by testing theories in areas where other funders feared to tread.

We started down a road of incremental change. We gradually shifted our focus and methodology as we took stock of the ever changing landscape, seeing education in its wider context and experiencing the power technology had to speed up innovation, even in South Africa where access to such technologies was still scarce.

During 2006/7 however, we had a crisis of leadership which resulted in a very high staff turnover and no new projects being taken on. Whilst this was clearly not optimal, it also gave perspective and clarity, allowing us to ask questions and define our future as a Foundation based on what we thought could work, not from what we had inherited, or what someone else did. The breakdown of the organisation allowed us to imagine something better.

Our Funder gave a new mandate to the management team: Re-imagine the Foundation, based on openness and innovation, using the money we have in a smarter fashion. Sit with the kernel of our learnings, and create a process that will take best advantage of them. Most importantly, test our theories and work towards a re-boot.

We observed a number of things that informed this iteration of the Foundation.

  • Because our investments often involved a technological component, by the time we could agree on the perfect project plan with a grantee, innovations appeared and the contextual environment changed. We had to be more nimble.
  • Openness and technology enable the unrestricted sharing and spread of ideas. We could implement our programme internationally.
  • If there was not one person, a champion, whose life’s work it was to bring about the change, it could break an intervention. We should support people, not just projects.

This sparked a process of gradual but deliberate change, a journey from project based funding to the individual, independent fellowships of today. We focused in four thematic areas. Communication and Analytical Skills in Education, Intellectual Property Rights, Open and Collaborative Educational Resources, and Telecommunications.

We brought the projects in-house and offered residential fellowships to thematic experts and thought leaders in their respective fields. The strategy was to work on policy in order to remove legislative barriers and do action based projects that would demonstrate the potential of working bottom up. We wanted to bring about positive shifts in thinking and doing in the world, and we learnt a great deal, both in breadth and depth. These learnings became the building blocks of our current way of working.

  • It is better to support an idea where it originates, than try to make it conform to a geographic context. We support Fellows where were based, not just in South Africa.
  • While the policy space remains very important in removing barriers to change, action based initiatives are a better fit for us. It allows us to test theories about ideal policy in a real world and examine the results. We focus on implementation rather than policy.
  • Only some ideas will get traction and that is fine. It is the nature of being experimental and encouraging innovation. We actively encourage being bold, and learning from things that fail.
  • Innovation is rarely something that is entirely new, but rather fresh thinking that adds value in incremental ways. Either way, that is what we look for. We understand that context is important.
  • The ideas that are most interesting are those that are not yet dominating newspaper headlines or flooding social networks. Those ideas typically have enough brilliant minds and funders paying attention to them. We do not have set thematic areas for funding and are open to discovery.
  • Past success is not a guarantee of future success. Nor is proven expertise. Creative problem solving often comes from left field. We make bets on inspired brilliance rather than rewarding past successes.
  • Freeing up 100% of a person’s time, and even more importantly attention, to follow their dream, will accelerate the research and development process. We offer the equivalent of a reasonable salary as a fellowship grant, to remove the concerns of making a living and allow space to thrive.
  • A sense of ownership is important for the success of any initiative. When an individual has skin in the game, they are more likely to have true ownership, which lasts far longer than the financial investment of a donor and fuels the continuation of the work. We ask the Fellow to co-invest financial resources into their projects. We also ensure that any resulting IP vests in the Fellow.
  • Individual commitment can only move an idea forward up to a point. We give the Fellows access to project funding to amplify their own investment of time and money at least tenfold.
  • Levers for positive social change in society do not come in a standard package. Markets forces, charities, governments, universities and many other types of institutions have a role to play. We support Fellows by investing through the best vehicle fit for purpose, be it for profit, non-profit or a rogue individual.
  • When a great idea originates, it rarely comes with the experience of institution building. Administration, human resource, legal and financial quandaries are huge burdens and can often overtake the initial kernel of genius. We provide a legal, financial, administrative and technical home for the Fellows, allowing them to concentrate on their objectives.

This is by no means the end of our learning journey and evolution. Each fellowship is made up of a set of unique components linked to the individual, the theme and the context. Shared threads run through all or some of them. This think piece series is our expression of this continuing process, sharing some of our questions and discoveries along the way.